A body fluid absorbent article having, as a surface material, soft nonwoven fabric made of cotton fiber is known (see JP-A-8-24289). Produced by hydro-entanglement, the surface material has fibers closely entangled at a small fiber-to-fiber distance and therefore has a hard hand and lacks softness for use as a surface material to be brought into contact with the skin. Softness could be improved by reducing the weight of the surface material per unit area, which is difficult, however, because the surface material is made solely of cotton fiber. If reduction in weight is attempted, the lowest possible weight would be about 35 to 40 g/m2. Moreover, since the surface material relies for its sheet form retention only on the entanglement of cotton fibers, it is difficult to expect sufficiently increased mechanical strength such as tensile strength. In general, to increase strength and to reduce weight conflict with each other.
Combining natural fiber such as cotton fiber with other fiber to reduce the weight of the cotton per unit area has been proposed in JP-A-60-199962. According to the proposed technique, a web of staple of natural fiber is laid on a network sheet and subjected to hydro-entanglement processing, whereby the web fibers are interlaced with themselves and with the network sheet. However, because it is the network sheet that the staple fibers are entangled with, the entangled staple fibers clog the mesh, resulting in a short interfiber distance, only to provide a stiff sheet with poor softness.